Maybe I am wrong

Why do people wear university-branded T-shirts? There are a bunch of plausible reasons for this. For example, it was given to them as a gift: like the rain jacket given to Tilburg employees two Christmases ago. It could also be the case that some people like to be associated with the academic prestige of a school they have attended; or they may also just like the exotic look of overseas schools and, so, they wear certain schools’ clothes even if they have never attended them.

Last but not least, there are cases where a school-branded T-shirt can hide (or, even worse, it can proudly exhibit) the message ‘I’m smart and I know it’.

This post is not about school branding, it is a plea for humility!

2/ x

MAYBE I AM WRONG

I would sue them.

I studied Law and I am a licensed lawyer. But I always thought that I do not have a great inclination towards adversarial attitude. Maybe I am wrong.

I must be wrong if, looking at an online advertisement of a hoodie with an ‘innocent’ joke on, my gut reaction was: ‘I would sue them’.

This was the indicted hoodie:

hoodie‘I GRADUATED FROM

TILBURG.

TO SAVE TIME, LET’S JUST

ASSUME I’M ALWAYS RIGHT’

 

 

I saw the allegedly funny hoodie and, immediately, my lawyer-mind was overwhelmed by the kind of questions you can expect only in an intellectual property course:

Q “Is ‘Tilburg University’ a registered trademark?”

A “I do not know for sure, but I know that there is a gift-shop where you can buy products officially branded with the Tilburg University logo (www.tilburguniversity.edu/students/studying/campus/giftshop/), therefore it is highly probable that it is”.

Q “Suppose that ‘Tilburg University’ is a registered trademark. Now, look at the hoodie: Is this a case of trademark infringement?”

A “Well… Firstly, we need to assess the similarity of the marks … in this case the word ‘university’ does not appear on the hoodie. On the other hand, it is also true that the word ‘graduated’ implies that, in this context, the reference to ‘Tilburg’ must delineate the university rather than the city. Therefore, it is likely that the hoodie can confuse customers. This is even more evident once we consider that, with regard to practices of school branding, mugs, T-shirts and hoodies are the most common items where the official logo appears”.

And bla, bla, bla…. I was spacing out in a sea of legal details, when I realized that my problem with that allegedly funny hoodie was not a case of brand infringement. It was the sentence “Let’s just assume that I’m always right” that punched me in the stomach. Maybe a lawsuit would fail, but that’s not a good reason to avoid a plea for humility! The allegedly funny hoodie is not just ugly and not funny at all. It is also dangerously pretentious: it aspires to represent the ideal mind-set of people committed to knowledge and to education, by depicting them as individuals who assume they never fail. Do you think that Socrates, as described in Plato’s Apology, would have worn such a hoodie to visit the oracle at Delphi? Surely, St. Augustine would have opted for a T-shirt that says ‘Fallor, ergo sum’!

To save time, let’s suppose instead that there are just two categories of people: the ones who think they are always right, and the ones who pursue knowledge. I hope that most of the Tilburg students belong to the latter category.

The two categories cannot overlap. That is because the ones who think to be always right never call into question their own idea about the world. In doing so, they risk living blind about their own biases. And in case that disagreement arises, they do not enter in a true dialogue with others: Since they are always right, others must always be wrong.

The ones who want to pursue knowledge, instead, must come to terms with their fallibility. Humans know the world by making predictions about it. Sometimes, however, previous expectations about reality are not met. We need, then, to be able to update our beliefs and to revise our way to make predictions. Accepting the fact that we can get things wrong is the first step to trying to get them right … the next time! But, maybe, I’m wrong.

c.

Suggested video: TED TALK by Kathryn Schulz “On being wrong” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QleRgTBMX88)

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